Launching an upgraded sustainability assessment for the fashion industry.
Client:
Cascale
Sector:
Fashion
Sustainability
Non-Profit
Category:
Research and design
The Challenge
No industry can claim to have successfully addressed all its sustainability challenges. In the fashion industry – an industry that touches billions of lives and has major impacts on people and the planet – one key problem slowing progress is the lack of a common language for measuring and reporting sustainability performance. This challenge was particularly evident for my client, a global member-based non-profit dedicated to advancing sustainability in the textile, apparel, and footwear sectors.
One of their flagship tools — an online assessment designed to help over 150 brands and retailers measure and improve their sustainability performance — was struggling to deliver consistent value. The tool's impact was diluted by the diverse needs of its users and increasing competition from other sustainability frameworks.
To address this, I was hired as the first service design specialist to work with the tool director and help reimagine the tool’s value proposition, features, and user experience. The goal was to relaunch an improved version that better served its diverse audience and strengthened the industry’s move toward a common sustainability language.
The Approach
To tackle this challenge, we adopted a customer-centric, cross-disciplinary, and participatory approach that involved over 90 stakeholders, who in 12 months helped us re-design and launch the updated assessment. To get there, we did the following:
Discovery: to unpack users’ context, needs, and expectations and inform market positioning, we conducted a competitive analysis combined with 1:1 interviews, offline assignments, workshops, and feedback surveys with members and industry experts. This led to a new value proposition and principles for design.
Design: to define the different elements of the assessment and quickly iterate on design proposals, we run multiple design sprints with members, industry experts, and internal teams. These led to the design briefs needed to start the delivery.
Delivery: to ensure users’ needs and design requirements were integrated into the upgraded solution, we embedded ourselves in the cross-functional delivery team (tech, ops, comms) until the launch of the upgraded assessment.
The upgraded assessment launched in March 2023.
"This project was a milestone in our organization's history. Its innovative approach positively transformed our ways of working and broadened our understanding of our audience. Co-design was a catalyst. Unifying stakeholders to actively participate in the project allowed us to understand better our members, their aspirations, and the industry's needs. By keeping these needs at the center of every decision and trusting this unfamiliar approach, we managed to influence how projects are now being conceptualized and developed internally."
— Jeremy Lardeau, Senior Vice President Higg Index, Cascale
The Outcomes
This project had a two-fold impact on customers and the organization. In particular, in its first year of launch, the upgraded assessment experienced an increase in adoption of 7%, customer satisfaction of 8.5%, and a decrease in the customer effort score of 13%. It also gained significant media interest across industry trades, and resulted in a solid foundation to prepare companies for the upcoming European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (EU CSRD). Meanwhile, the customer-centric, multidisciplinary, and participatory approach contributed to strengthening relationships for my client; breaking silos in the organization, and motivating teams to adopt the approach in other projects.